Thursday, January 15, 2009

after-christmas catch-up

holiday craziness sort of knocked me off schedule with the common threads quilting bee (i think i'm not the only one), so here are two blocks i recently finished:


i was thrilled with nadia's request for embroidery and loved the fabrics she sent, so i used the flowers in the upper left fabric as inspiration.

i'm still a beginner at embroidery, and i tried a few different stitches. this one is outlined in split stitch, with satin stitch sections and some french knots (my first successful ones ever!)

and this one... i don't know what the stitch is called. i saw my mother-in-law using it this christmas when we visited and i liked the way it looked, so i thought i'd try it. i also tried two different kinds of thread and i'm not sure which one i like better. i hope they're okay with nadia!

here's oiyi's valentine block for melody:

some of the prints she sent were a bit "old school" and reminded me of my childhood, so i decided to use a more old school simple square pattern. i was so inspired by the sashiko work projects in the zakka sewing book that i decided to try it out on this block. i really enjoyed this type of embroidery and i think i'll do it again soon!

i will try to get these in the mail soon, but today it is -13 degrees (-35 with windchill) and i'm not leaving the house! maybe i'll finish jenny's block today and mail them all at the same time!

7 comments:

Rebekah said...

I love the embroidery on both of your blocks! The flowers on Nadia's are especially amazing. I can't believe you've never done this before. And your stitches for Oiyi's blocks are so old school and so cute :)

jenny said...

I love the embroidered flowers! very impressive!

Oiyi said...

I love the embroidery!!! Very cute.Thank you.

One Shabby Chick said...

Wow that embroidery is incredible! And I love the little patchwork with tiny white hearts - so cute!

abcgirl said...

thank you! maybe embroidery just looks worse when you're in the process of doing it and see tiny wonkiness in the stitches? i was in despair as i was actually stitching them that they were turning out just awful, but when i actually finished each flower and stepped back a bit to see it as a whole flower, it was much better than i'd feared. is that normal for embroidery?

Robin (RsIslandCrafts) said...

They both look great!

I think it is that way with embroidery. When you are up close you can see all the wonkiness. Once you step back...it all blends in well together. Plus, flowers are part of nature...they aren't meant to be perfect :)

jacquie said...

good for you for sticking it out on the embroidery...i gave up on mine. good lesson to wait till it's done and look at the whole thing!